Over the last 30 years, Anna Quindlen's work has appeared in some of America's most influential newspapers, many of its best-known magazines, and on both fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. She is a novelist and also writes the prestigious "Last Word" column in Newsweek magazine. Her latest novel, Blessings, is a New York Times bestseller and was recently made into a television movie starring Mary Tyler Moore. Quindlen is currently working on a new collection of essays, Loud and Clear, to be published in April 2004.

A columnist at The New York Times from 1981 to 1994, in 1990 Quindlen became only the third woman in the paper’s history to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page when she began the nationally syndicated “Public and Private.” A collection of those columns, Thinking Out Loud, was published by Random House in 1993 and was on The New York Times Best Seller List for more than three months. In 1992 Quindlen won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

Quindlen joined the Times in 1977 as a general assignment reporter and was named the paper's deputy metropolitan editor in 1983. She wrote the “About New York” column from 1981 to 1983 and created the column, “Life in the 30’s” in 1985.

In 1995 Quindlen left the world of newspapers, which she had joined as a copy girl at age 18, to become a novelist full-time. Quindlen has written four bestselling novels: Object Lessons (1991), One True Thing (1994), Black and Blue (1998) and Blessings (2002). How Reading Changed My Life was released in September 1998 as was One True Thing, a Universal feature film starring Meryl Streep. Black and Blue, which spent six months on The New York Times Best Seller List, was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, and was made into a television movie. With the release of A Short Guide To A Happy Life in 2000, Quindlen became the first writer ever to have books appear on the fiction, nonfiction, and self-help New York Times Best Seller lists. The book sold close to a million copies.